What is USAID and why are Musk and Trump shutting it down?
On Friday, President Trump directly called for the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — America’s main global provider of humanitarian aid — just hours before nearly all of its 10,000 staffers were set to be let go or suspended. (At the last minute, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from placing 2,200 USAID employees on paid leave.)
“THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network. “CLOSE IT DOWN!”
For weeks, Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s cost-cutting, bureaucracy-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, have been attacking USAID as (in Musk’s words) “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” — then using those attacks to justify halting its overseas programs, shuttering its website and laying off its workforce.
The onslaught has shocked those who have long seen USAID in less heated terms: as an agency that, say, provides nutritional assistance to malnourished children in developing countries and supports democratic governance.
So what does USAID actually do? And where do Trump and Musk’s accusations of corruption and conspiracy come from? A quick guide.
Why does USAID exist?
President John F. Kennedy launched USAID in 1961 as a more nimble way of countering Soviet influence abroad while improving American security at home. The idea was simple: The more we help other countries achieve stability and economic prosperity through foreign assistance, the less likely they’ll be to side against us.
Six decades later, supporters of USAID argue that it still serves the same vital purpose — especially as China’s power continues to grow.
“For much of the world population, the investments and work of U.S.A.I.D. make up the primary (and often only) contact with the United States,” former USAID Administrator Samantha Power wrote Thursday in the New York Times. “U.S.A.I.D. has generated vast stores of political capital in the more than 100 countries where it works, making it more likely that when the United States makes hard requests of their leaders — for example, to send peacekeepers to a war zone, to help a U.S. company enter a new market, or to extradite a criminal to the United States — that they say yes.”
What does USAID do?
Using funds appropriated by Congress, USAID works alongside various nongovernmental organizations and other private partners to address pressing global issues. Until recently, some of these included:
Dispensing medicine to 500,000 children with HIV.
Monitoring bird flu in 49 countries.
Working with at-risk youth in Central America to prevent gang violence that spurs migration.
Cleaning up land poisoned by Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Collaborating with communities in countries like Syria, Morocco and Kazakhstan to reduce vulnerability to radicalization.
Last year, USAID managed more than $40 billion and assisted in about 130 countries.
Why do Trump and Musk oppose USAID?
Criticizing foreign aid programs on political grounds is nothing new — particularly for “America First” Republicans.
Earlier this year, the Trump Administration released a statement titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” claiming that USAID “has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight.”
Of the 12 “pet projects” mentioned, however, just one was characterized accurately, according to a Washington Post review.
Instead, what the programs had in common — “$1.5 million to advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities” and “$2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam” — is that they didn’t align with Trump’s political preferences.
Is there evidence of corruption at USAID?
In recent years, both critics and supporters of USAID have agreed with calls for transparency and accountability.
“Foreign Aid is not charity,” then-Sen. Marco Rubio wrote on social media in 2017. “We must make sure it is well spent.”
But the agency is also “critical to our national security,” he added.
A few years later, Rubio sponsored a bill that would have required USAID to provide more information about its partner organizations.
Rubio’s earlier, reformist approach differs significantly from the one he’s implementing now as Trump’s Secretary of State. As evidence of why USAID should be systematically dismantled and folded into the State Department, Trump this week cited a report that the D.C. news website Politico “seems to have received $8,000,000” from USAID as proof that “billions of dollars have been stollen [sic],” with “much of it going to the fake news media as a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats.”
“THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY!”
The only problem? USAID did not award Politico $8 million in exchange for positive coverage. Instead, over two years, the agency spent $44,000 on staff subscriptions to E&E News, Politico’s paywalled energy-policy publication.
How much money could the government save by shutting down USAID?
Polling has repeatedly shown that Americans vastly overestimate how much the U.S. spends on foreign aid. According to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation, respondents believe that it makes up about 25% to 30% of the budget, on average.
As a result, most Americans think the U.S. spends too much money overseas.
But in reality, USAID’s $40 billion budget represents less than 1% of federal spending, according to the Washington Post.
Or as Rubio himself put it in 2019: "Anybody who tells you that we can slash foreign aid and that will bring us to balance is lying to you."